A Workaround and a Suggestion

Here in SC, our grass is starting to go dormant. I doubt anyone in my neighborhood is watering anymore, unless they overseeded with rye. Since the grass is going dormant, and turning that nice tan color (some actually spray it green), we usually don’t water from about now until spring. Especially with the extra rain provided by hurricane Eta (Lambda? Omega? I’m losing track).

But I still like to know about what the moisture level of my lawn is (been following it most of the year, okay, so I’m interested). Well, disabling the schedule eliminates the moisture graph. So instead, I set the program to START in March. It won’t run until then, but I can see the moisture graph. And if I see something I don’t like, like the lawn drying TOO much, I can always water a little. It works well.

Oh, yeah, the suggestion: I actually thought of two: While I wouldn’t mind watering a little this time of year, I normally use Flex Daily, and putting almost half an inch of water down on dormant grass over+ hours is overkill. This time of year, it shouldn’t water as much, I think. Of course I can just reduce my Allowed Depletion and have it do that.

The second, and more important to me, suggestion is: Let the moisture level go down to zero, and state it as a percent of TOTAL moisture, not a percent of the Allowed Depletion. So, when it’s time to water at 50% allowed depletion the moisture level would be - surprise! - 50%. And of course let it go below that. Especially this time of year, I could let the moisture go well below 50% with concern for the yard. And I think it would make more sense to people as well.

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I absolutely agree with soil moisture actually displaying the actual soil moisture. The bottom limit of that number would be based on soil type. It is not intuitive in my head to have to always calculate percent of a percent to get how much moisture I have

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I am fortunate that I have some extra unused zones, so I set one of them up like one of my lawn zones, and put it in it’s own flex daily “test” schedule. That way I have at least an approximation of moisture levels, and I can check it to quickly see precipitation amounts and that my weather station is still showing up. Not the best solution, but it works for me.

I agree 100% with this suggestion. It would help a lot of people understand the moisture levels.

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